Portrait of Robert Nugent, by Thomas Gainsborough, 1760. Robert Nugent was MP for Bristol for 20 years from 1754. He was involved in the 1750 Act which replaced the London-based Royal African Company with the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa.The new company gave merchants a say in the running of the African trade. This portrait in the Lord Mayor’s Office shows Nugent holding copy of the Act for the Regulation of the Slave Trade.